Instructions:
Before getting your computer, you completed the first step in the Explication process: paraphrasing the meaning of the poem based on what you thought it meant. You should have written a theme statement at the bottom of your original test paper. "In this poem, the author shows ....."
Now, you need to use these links, and these links ONLY to find a second meaning in the poem. Look at the history behind the poem's content and define unknown words so you can then write your second theme statement at the top of a word document. "In this poem, the author also explains......"
Finally, write a paragraph comparing and contrasting the two separate views of the poem, relating it to his life as well as ours. Explain what we can learn from the themes he's trying to convey to us. Utilize information in the links to help you create a theory of the meanings in the poems, and provide at least one quotation to prove your thoughts. This response should be at least a half page in length, using double spaced 12 point Times New Roman font.
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,--
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed;
A Senate,--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.
Before getting your computer, you completed the first step in the Explication process: paraphrasing the meaning of the poem based on what you thought it meant. You should have written a theme statement at the bottom of your original test paper. "In this poem, the author shows ....."
Now, you need to use these links, and these links ONLY to find a second meaning in the poem. Look at the history behind the poem's content and define unknown words so you can then write your second theme statement at the top of a word document. "In this poem, the author also explains......"
Shelley's Biography
Online Dictionary
Historical References
Regency
Finally, write a paragraph comparing and contrasting the two separate views of the poem, relating it to his life as well as ours. Explain what we can learn from the themes he's trying to convey to us. Utilize information in the links to help you create a theory of the meanings in the poems, and provide at least one quotation to prove your thoughts. This response should be at least a half page in length, using double spaced 12 point Times New Roman font.
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,--
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed;
A Senate,--Time's worst statute unrepealed,--
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.
Percy Bysshe Shelley